Can I Cross Ruby barbs and tiger barbs?

[GLOBAL1]

I have 5 rubies and 5 tigers, my rubies go red and black and follow the female tigers around all the time, they don't seem to fight or anything, just swimming around like the male wants to mate with the female tiger. Would be cool if they would bread an make Ruby tigers

 

[Delapool]

I don't think I've heard of it done. Did you come across anything?

 

[toolman]

Following, love to learn new things.

 

[Andy Sager]

Since they are both in the same family, they can, in theory be able to breed. Here's the catch tho with hybrids: most often, they produce either infertile eggs or inferior fry. Follow that with sterility. So the parents that made them would need to be kept as the offspring may not be able to reproduce.
There are 2 schools regarding hybrids. Some like them and see no harm in their creation. ( Some have been very successful in producing new colors ie. the red swordtail is a mix from the wild green sword and the wild red platy.) Then there is the other school which is very anti hybrids as they taint the gene pool and are very easy for some unscrupulous breeder to sell off the fish for what they look like opposed to what they are ( hybrid mixes.) So some poor unsuspecting hobbyist buys what they think is a pure fish only to have it's breeding efforts tainted or be discouraging because they are not using pure fish.
From a personal standpoint, I'm from the second school. The fish today are bad enough that there is little need to have more unnecessarily fragile fish on the market. On the other hand, a ruby tiger barb ( a tiger barb with a purple face) does sound intriguing. If you do it, I just suggest you destroy any fry that don't fit your end desired instead of putting them out into the hobby.